Medical Procedure Tomorrow!

It has been a long time since I posted here, but a lot has happened.

The first revelation was that the details of the insurance weren't what we first thought. The 41 day window is out, because Alex is insured from now straight through to his birthday. This is great news!

The second revelation is that he's not having his surgery! This is unexpected, but good news as well. I will explain.

When consulting with his doctor, it was estimated that the surgical procedure Alex was planning to have would only have a 50/50 chance of success. So instead, he opted to go a different route. So tomorrow, he is having a procedure done called a nerve block, which will hopefully remove the pain in his ass (pun fully intended).

Its almost certainly a cheaper procedure, but donations are still needed! So if you can make any last-minute donations, now is the time.

Thank you for all of your support!

Good News for My Brother's Butt!

Fantastic news for my brother's butt: chances are that he will have his surgery this year!

I won't get too specific here, but due to a quirk of the recent health care reform bills and the timing of my brother's birthday, he will have a month and ten days this summer in which he can get his surgery under an insurance plan.

This is great news! Not only does this mean that my brother's butt will be fixed this year, but I can adjust this website to drive the fundraising toward the new goal! This also means that there is now a time constraint on raising those funds, so I had better get started.

The insurance is expected to cover 80% of the cost of the surgery. However, there will likely be other expenses like consults and medications that will be incurred outside of my brother's 41 day insurance window. Therefore, I have re-evaluated the potential expenses to be up to $5000, again shooting for an overestimate just in case there are unexpected expenses or complications.

I have adjusted the Butt Thermometer to reflect this, and this means we are now at nearly 5% of the goal! Be prepared for more announcements very soon as I push to raise this number.

First surgery consult is in April!

Pixel 1 Achieved!

Pixel 1?  What do I mean by that?

Well, we just had an extremely generous donation come in that brought us up above the $100 mark!  We still have a long way to go, but things are looking up.  Not only that, but now if you squint and look super duper crazy closely at the Butt Fund thermometer on the right, you'll see a strip of purple next to the 0.  That's right, the Butt Fund is now large enough so that the savings appear as the first row of pixels on that thermometer!

I did the math, and every pixel from the bottom of the 0 to the top of the thermometer represents exactly $80 of savings.  We'll get to the top!  We'll do it pixel by pixel but we'll get to the top.

Thank you all for your help.

Photos and Pledges

We here at FixMyBrothersButt.com have been busy!  (By we I mean I, and by busy I mean slightly less lazy.)  In the past week two major additions have been added to the website.  Here they are in no particular order:

Pledges!  I am now accepting pledges of funds per mile of distance I travel on the Ride for the Cure for My Brother's Butt!  Click that link to find a super-easy form you can use to pledge any amount.  Even as little as a nickel helps my brother's butt out a lot!

The Photography Store!  Fix My Brother's Butt has now become the only online supplier of Alex's photography!  An entire third of the purchase price for this amazing artwork goes toward getting his butt fixed, so now you can help my brother out and decorate your walls at the same time.

Keep watching, because I have many more plans to come!

Aaaaand he knows!

Last Wednesday, August 11, I finally told my brother about this website. He was pretty enthusiastic about the whole idea, so things are about to get crazy around here.

Step 1 is already complete: I have modified the website to make it look much, much more legit. Since I was finally able to ask my brother's permission to use is name, picture, and other details on http://www.fixmybrothersbutt.com/, the website no longer looks super sketchy and hopefully people will be more apt to donate.

Step 2 is the Fix My Brother's Butt twitter feed! Now that I have Alex's permission, I will be able to use his feed for its originally intended purpose: updates about his butt!

Step 3 is new videos! I have taken a few fun videos in the past weeks that I haven't been able to post due to the fact that my brother is in them. Expect to see those begin to appear, along with the video I took of my brother's reaction to finding out about this website.

Step 4 is the Butt Store! I plan to offer prints of Alex's photography for sale directly from the website (along with some other goodies), with part of the proceeds going to him and part going to his Butt Fund. Look for that to appear sometime in the next few weeks.

Step 5 is a super secret project that won't be secret for much longer. You will see a hint of it appear today on the facebook page.

Stay tuned! These and many more shenanigans are forthcoming.

Help Out by Shopping Amazon!

I won't quit this thing until I've found a way to fix my brother's butt for good. To that end, I've added yet another free way for you to help with the effort. Just use the search box at the right to search Amazon.com!

That's right. A cut of anything purchased using that search box will go directly to the butt fund, and it's no more expensive to you than shopping at a regular store. In a lot of cases, it's actually way cheaper! A win for you, a win for me, and most importantly, a win for my brother's butt.

Here, I'll even add a few links to get you started.

Help Out with a Butt Video

Sunday, I mentioned that if you send me a video of your own, I'd post it on FixMyBrothersButt.com. Today, I'm taking that idea to the next level and announcing an effort to get lots of videos added to help promote Fix My Brothers Butt! It's an easy and free way to help get by brother's butt fixed, and I'd be infinitely appreciative of anyone who wants to contribute.

I'm leaving the content of the video wide open. It can be about this website, about fixing my brother's butt, about butts in general, or not about butts at all. All I ask is that you try to keep it relatively clean.

If you'd like to help out in this way, post your video online and either send me an e-mail with a link to it or post it as a response to one of the videos in the fixmybrothersbutt YouTube channel. You'll see it appear in the Butt Friends section of the Butt Videos page within a couple of days.

In fact, there are already a couple of videos there, including this newly-added gem performed by another of my friends' kids. Sadly, I haven't gotten any of their parents to join in yet, the wusses. That's right, I'm talking to you!

Butt Surgery Reenactment!

The moment you have been waiting for has arrived! A few days ago, my roommate and I filmed a dramatic reenactment of the infamous original butt surgery that has caused all of my brother's butt-related problems. We may have taken a bit of artistic license with the details. Happy Independence Day!



If you like that, there are more videos on the newly-created Butt Videos section of the website! In fact, I'm announcing a new way you can help out. If you're the creative sort, film a video about the website, about fixing my brother's butt, or about butts in general, then tell me and I'll put it up on the Butt Videos page. Butts!

The First Butt Video is Here!

That's right! It's a bit belated because of my poor upload speeds and a minor phone snafu, but the first of many planned shenanigans has arrived! Take a look:


Pretty good for part of a weekend and one very late night, right? And it only gets better from here on out. Stay tuned!

More Ways to Spread the Word!

There are now several easy and free ways to help out Fix My Bother's Butt! Today, I've modified the website to include several links you can use to share the site with your friends as well as complete strangers.

I've discovered that one of the biggest challenges in launching a big donation campaign like this is the difficulty in getting the word out about it. I know that a lot of people out there would be amused enough by the concept of Fix My Brother's Butt to contribute to the effort, but getting the word to them isn't easy.

To that end, I've created these new e-mail and social bookmarking links. On the right side of the page underneath the donate buttons, you'll find ten direct links to places you can use to spread the word, and more are coming. Please take a few seconds to help get the word out!

Time to kick it up a notch!

I have slightly unfortunate news. In the 48 hours since I started Fix My Brother's Butt, not a single Butt Fund donation has come through. The $10 that it displays now is the amount that I threw in to make sure the donations are working at all.

While disappointing, it's also not that surprising. Money is tight these days for everyone, and not a whole lot of people know about Fix My Brother's Butt. At least not yet.

I anticipated this possibility, and I planned for it. In short, it's time to kick it up a notch! This weekend, I will create a crazy YouTube video to try and spread Fix My Brother's Butt far and wide! I have a few other surprises up my sleeve as well.

There are things you as well! Take a moment out of your day to tell someone else about Fix My Brother's Butt. Follow the fixmybrothersb twitter feed or friend Fix My Brother's Butt on Facebook. Post links to forums or whatnot. And even if you do nothing else, keep following the website. You won't be disappointed!

Why all the anonymity?

You may have noticed that I've taken some steps to keep Fix My Brother's Butt more or less anonymous. There are two reasons for this.

Reason one is the fact that my brother doesn't even know this thing exists. Yep, that's right, my brother does not yet know that there is a website dedicated to his butt. I've kept it that way because I want to see how far we can get before he finds out about it. If I post my name on the website, there's a chance that someone will inform him prematurely, and I want to avoid that if I can. He will find out about it eventually, but it will likely be from someone else I've told and not from me.

Reason number two is this: due to the fact I haven't told my brother about this campaign, he hasn't given me explicit permission to tell his story. Don't get me wrong here, I'm reasonably certain he wouldn't mind. He did give me permission to write my senators a few months ago and use his case study as an example in favor of my arguments about health care. Also, the website was partly his idea (I'll explain that later). However, until he tells me for sure that it's okay to tell people on the internet that this story is about him, I would rather keep things anonymous.

I do realize that this anonymity makes the website look kind of sketchy, and I wouldn't blame you if you wanted to wait till something more solid is posted before you donate. Another option is to contact me personally to verify that I'm on the up-and-up.

And hey, wouldn't it be awesome if we could raise at least $1000 before he figures it out? Pitch in if you can!

Fix My Brother's Butt Launches Tonight!

And the moment has finally arrived! After twenty-four hours of strife, sweat, blood, hardship, a little more blood, and a minor encounter involving a mentally-challenged squirrel, Fix My Brother's Butt has launched! Visit it here:

http://www.fixmybrothersbutt.com/

What is this crazy thing? It is a campaign to solicit donations with the goal of getting my brother's botched butt surgery fixed.

Long story short, my brother had a surgery in mid 2009 to remove a cyst from his tailbone. The surgery was more or less botched, and now he can't sit for long periods of time without severe pain. He needs another surgery to fix it, but he has no insurance, he had to leave his driving job because he can't sit that long anymore, and the work he needs done is too expensive. In fact, it could come to $16,000 when you include related expenses like doctor visits and tests! Lucky for him his brother is a supernerd with way too much time on his hands, so now he has a website dedicated to his butt!

There are rewards! There are laughs! Good times are to be had by all! Once again, check it out:

http://www.fixmybrothersbutt.com/